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Telkom has announced plans to restructure its business, outsourcing noncore operations, rationalising its IT systems and closing retail stores, among other cost-saving moves.
The company has promised to keep job losses to a minimum and has denied a claim by labour union Solidarity, made earlier on Monday, that job cuts are planned in its field service (maintenance) division.
It hopes to improve cost efficiencies within its Telkom Direct Stores, in its call centres and in respect of its legacy IT syste...

CELL C is in talks with Huawei Technologies and ZTE about developing its high-speed network, CEO Jose dos Santos said.
The phone company is in late-stage negotiations with the Chinese manufacturers about building its first commercial 4G-technology network and may complete the deal at Mobile World Congress next week, Mr dos Santos said in an interview on Tuesday.
Cell Cs fast-data strategy would focus on developing long-term evolution service for business customers, he said.
"WeҒve been spendi...

The strong rally in Telkoms share price has continued, with the counter touching a fresh five-year high of R70 in early trading on the JSE on Tuesday. Since its low point 18 months ago, TelkomҒs share price has now climbed by just shy of 500 percent. A R10 000 investment in Telkom on 6 May May 2013, when its share bottomed at R11,93/share, would today be worth R48 676. The last time Telkoms share price traded at such levels was before it disposed of its 50 percent stake in Vodacom in May 2009. Telkom ...

Trade union Solidarity on Thursday warned Telkom not to use race in deciding which employees to retrench.
Solidarity today gave Telkom a final warning to abandon the race criteria it uses for retrenchments,Ӕ the unions industry head Marius Croucamp said in a statement.
He said it was unlawful to do so.
ғHow can any employer penalise an employee based on his or her race in the decision-making process to retrench people? This criterion is simply built into the process to ensure that Telko...

Telkom will consider employment equity in its latest round of planned job cuts, which could affect more than 2 600 management-level employees, a media report said on Wednesday.
This means that partially state-owned and JSE-listed telecommunications operator plans to target white, male employees when making job cutsӔ, according to a report published by Bloomberg, which quotes trade unions as its source.
White males, the news agency says, make up about 40% of the senior and middle management posit...

Cell C has upped the ante in South Africas mobile price war. The mobile operator has slashed prepaid call rates to 66c/minute, from 99c/minute previously.
The new 66c tariff excludes its Supacharge recharge benefits, which will continue to be available on its 99c/minute prepaid plans. Cell CҒs move comes a month after MTN cut its prepaid rates to 79c/minute on per-second billing. Vodacom has also cut its rates to 79c/minute, but only on a promotional basis.
Cell C will continue to offer the lowe...

Vodacom intends expanding the size of its network in Gauteng dramatically in the next financial year, with plans to add 555 4G/LTE towers in the province by the end of March 2015.
The expansion, which also includes the deployment of new 2G and 3G sites, forms part of Vodacoms intention to spend about R9bn on its network in the 2015 financial year, which begins on 1 April. By way of comparison, Vodacom spent about R7bn in South Africa in the 2014 financial year.
According to managing executive Neville ...

THE fight by cellphone operators against plans by the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) to reduce call fees is intensifying.
On Wednesday, Vodacom filed court papers to stop the sector regulator from cutting mobile termination rates fees cellphone companies charge each other for calls. MTN filed a similar case less than two weeks ago.
Icasa plans to cut the fees by half to 20c a minute. But MTN and Vodacom would have to pay smaller rivals Cell C and Telkom Mobile 44c a minute, in wha...

Telkom has weighed in on the battle raging in the telecommunications industry over mobile termination rates, the fees operators pay each other to carry calls between their networks. Group CEO Sipho Maseko says recent moves to oppose reduced rates, which will take effect on 1 April, will delay reducing the cost of calls to consumers and are not in the public interest.
MTN has taken communications regulator Icasa to court, accusing it of not following due process and engaging correctly with the industry in...

Dominant incumbents are typically defensive when any attempt is made to curb their otherwise abusive behaviour, but isnt MTN taking it a bit far? Not content to make ғsuper-normal profits (more than normal profits, or the amount of revenue generated after paying costs, by a monopoly) for nearly 15 years, MTN wants to choke the consumer further by refusing to accept regulatory intervention under law, by sector regulator Icasa.
As Research ICT Africa has repeatedly shown, prices to communicate in Sou...